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Those 25 dancers we worked with for a day, in as highly productive a way as possible - a long class, a period of teaching bits of the repertory - in fact I didn't teach Bank, I've used parts of Oil and Water.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
I could say now at 66, yeah, I was a fabulous dancer. I was really terrific, you know. But I was always present. I was present. I was supposed to be where I was supposed to be at the time I was supposed to be.
It wasn't until I did a musical revue in Paris in the 1980s called 'Black and Blue,' and met the great men and women responsible for the progress of tap dance, that my relationship with the dance really began.
Honestly, when you have a child your life changes so much. Like, the last three mornings, I haven't even had time to shower. That seems like it should be the easiest thing to do, but sometimes it's the hardest.
You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or running through a rainstorm, then I'll be very glad to be a song and dance man.
Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they've studied the tapes of the old films. We didn't have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.
There is a certain amount of pornography that exists throughout Purple Rain, but the appeal is obvious. You can really pick that picture apart and see where "A" fits into "B" and so on. It was very wisely done.
One clear difference between art and commercial work is that commercial work is exploitive: the work may be high quality but the intention is to sell product or tickets. Art exists with or without ticket sales.
I've always had to keep the walls in place, and the only way to do that is to keep yourself constantly occupied... From the time I was 8 years old, until I went to college, I worked... There was no social life.
When you stop to take a minute and look at Queen Latifah's career, she came out of the box right. You know, 'Ladies First!' And she's been consistent with that message of female self-empowerment. She really has!
I'm still growing, still learning. I'm still open and vulnerable enough to know there's much more to be taught to me and learned by me. I hope I don't reach my pinnacle on this earth where I think I know it all.
The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of her soul...This is the truly creative dancer, natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of herself and out of something greater than all selves.
My greatest fear in working is always the end. Lately I have taken to tricking myself into finishing by leaving a hole in the middle somewhere, then stitching the two pieces together - the Union Pacific approach.
I like having my picture taken and being a glamorous person. Sometimes when I find myself getting impatient, I just remember the times I cried my eyes out because nobody wanted to take my picture at the Trocadero.
I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...
I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin.
It's been so long and I'm lost without you, what am I gonna do? I been needin' you, wantin' you, wonderin' if you're the same and who's been with you. Is your heart still mine? I wanna cry sometimes ... I miss you.
dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.
Everything is worth it. The hard work, the times when you're tired, the times where you're a bit sad... In the end, it's all worth it because it really makes me happy. There's nothing better than loving what you do.
I believe that this world was set about for us to enjoy and to love and to experience and to have it all be, to a certain extent, unpredictable. Ever since I was a child I have believed that my life has been guided.
I love a good argument and sometimes I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut if I think someone is wrong... I've always fought for what I believe in, and I don't quit until I have accomplished what I set out to do.
With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.
My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account.
I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.
I go through the same problems all young people go through. Being in this business, I accept that there are positives and negatives but having a strong family base and a belief in God enables me to weather the storms.
Britney and I are on the same page. There are no grudges. We communicate on disciplining the kids, and if they're grounded here, they're grounded there. She's a completely different person - as the kids will tell you!
Step Up doesn't have to hide anything. These are actually moves that people do. It just so happens that dancers are superheroes. People think there is a lot of wire work or camera tricks, but that's just not the case.
It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.
It was a big step, to go from not talking to people to stepping on to a stage. That's when I felt the most comfortable, because I could do anything I wanted to and say anything I wanted to, even if people didn't laugh.
Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed.
Increasingly, stars are recruited from the ranks of professional models, with the result that today`s starlets are better dressed and better groomed than ever before, though it is doubtful if they are better actresses.
Increasingly, stars are recruited from the ranks of professional models, with the result that today's starlets are better dressed and better groomed than ever before, though it is doubtful if they are better actresses.
There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.
To go back to visit the early days with Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, when she was the dance captain of 'How to Succeed,' and finding them again 25 years later and working with them on 'Charity.' That was really great fun.
I never played a rich man, I never played a prince. And to play a sailor or longshoreman you had to make your dance more eclectic and varied, but still keep it indigenous to your nationality, upbringing, and background.
We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris, and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number that we did for PBS, so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings.
What we do now is to be valued - but we need to do more, so that it's more exciting to other people, and therefore that excitement shines back on us and we're able to have the energy to do more, to widen our creativity.
To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.
What success I achieved in the theatre is due to the fact that I have always worked just as hard when there were ten people in the house as when there were thousands. Just as hard in Springfield, Illinois as on Broadway.
I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and depriving them of any chance of doing anything beautiful or original.
Don't think you are going to go on forever because you are not and begin to plan something that will compensate as you reduce your capacities to leap or turn on this or that or the other, begin thinking of something else.
I'm very artistic - I feel like ever since I was born I've been drawing. I actually have a picture in my room that I painted, and people are always like "Where did you buy that?" It's cool that people are impressed by it.
I get Twitter, and think it's a great way to keep it in touch, but I don't do it a lot. I hate reading when people tweet about what you're eating or who they are out with, but it's a nice way to keep in touch with people.
It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Black people should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This museum has certainly stood for that in this town.
I'm a big fan of all the Boston guys that are acting - Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg - they made a great career out of it, and they found a way to do it and still be cool guys, so that's kind of where I want to be.
I was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am.